Monday, August 06, 2012

Justin Torres wins the 2012 Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award for “We the Animals”

Justin Torres has won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award,
which honors an outstanding debut novel published during a calendar year. His
winning book, We
the Animals (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which has been called “a
gorgeous, deeply humane book” (Daniel Alarcón), is a coming-of-age novel about
three brothers growing up "amidst the chaotic and destructive love of their
working-class parents."Here are but a
few words of praise for We the Animals:

“Justin Torres' debut novel is a
welterweight champ of a book. It's short but it's also taut, elegant, lean —
and it delivers a knockout.” —NPR's Weekend Edition

“This
brief but extraordinary novel defies easy categorization, but in it Torres
demonstrates a mastery of prose seldom encountered in first books. It’s an
exhilarating beginning for a young writer.” —Los
Angeles Review of Books

“A strobe light of a story...I
wanted more of Torres's haunting word-torn world...” —New York Times Book
Review

“Telling the story of three
mixed race brothers growing up in New York state, Justin Torres’ debut novel, We
the Animals, is a quick, raw, punchy read....memorable and vivid.” —Dallas
Morning News

Torres, who is the first Latino writer to win this award, will be honored at the VCU Cabell First Novelist Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University on November
8, 2012.

Nearly
100 novels were submitted for this year’s prize which is now in its eleventh
year. A university-wide panel of readers in addition to readers from the
Richmond community reduced the list to 12
semifinalists and ultimately three finalists. The finalists were then
considered by a panel of judges consisting of David Gordon, winner of the 2011
VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for The
Serialist; Maya Payne Smart, writer and chair of James River Writers; and
bestselling author Tama Janowitz.

The
VCU Cabell First Novelist Award celebrates the VCU MFA in Creative Writing
Program’s year-long novel workshop, the first in the nation and one of the
few still in existence. The winning author receives a $5,000 cash prize. Travel
expenses and lodging also are provided for the author and his or her agent and
editor to attend the VCU Cabell First Novelist Festival, a series of events
that focus on the creation, publication and promotion of a debut novel.

The deadline for the 2013
VCU Cabell First Novelist Award is September 15 for books published January
through June 2012. For books published July through December 2012, the deadline
is January 12, 2013. For more information, visit www.firstnovelist.vcu.edu. If you have a novel that fits the bill, I
urge you to have your publisher submit it.
My novel, The
Book of Want, was one of the 12 semifinalists for this year's prestigious award but never
would have been considered if it hadn’t been for the University of Arizona
Press’s decision to submit it for consideration. As my father always says, you don’t get
anything unless you try!

IN OTHER NEWS…

◙ Over at the El
Paso Times, Rigoberto Gonzálezreviews
Eduardo C. Corral’s debut poetry collection Slow
Lightning (Yale University Press) noting that Corral is the first
Latino to win the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in its 106-year history. González observes, in part: “The
sophistication of Slow Lightning … is
that its stunning imagery, its serious treatment of craft, as well as its
homage to a Southwestern culture and landscape that predates its life as a U.S.
territory, will endow the book with a timeless quality. This is indeed a classic in the making.” You may read the full review here,
and you may visit Corral’s official website here.

◙
Remember that on August 28, Reyna Grande’s
new memoir, The
Distance Between Us, will be released by Simon & Schuster. It has already garnered raves including a
Starred Review from Publishers Weekly. And Sonia Nazario, Pulitzer Prize winner, and
author of Enrique’s Journey, offers
this: “In this poignant memoir, Reyna Grande skillfully depicts another side of
the immigrant experience—the hardships and heartbreaks of the children who are
left behind. Through her brutally honest
firsthand account of growing up in Mexico without her parents, Grande sheds
light on the often overlooked consequence of immigration—the disintegration of
a family.”

◙ Over at The Independent Publisher website, Ariel Bronson
offers an article
entitled “Indie Groundbreaking Publisher: The University of Arizona Press”
where she notes, in part:

It’s no secret that the past several years have been difficult for
university presses. It has been a challenge for many presses to stay afloat and
adapt to new industry standards while university budgets shrink. A recent
article in The New York Times states that “half a dozen universities have
closed or suspended their presses over the past three years...as tightening
budgets have complicated efforts by university presses to keep up with the
changing publishing marketplace.”

The University of Arizona
Press (the UA Press) is a university press with its head way above water as
it continues to thrive in today’s publishing market and economy. By continually
expanding its catalog with quality works about Arizona and the Southwest
borderlands – and with the awards to prove it – the UA Press has shown that it
isn’t going anywhere.

Ariel Bronson is a senior at the University of Michigan
studying as a dual concentrator in English and Communication Studies. She
worked as an editorial intern at Sleeping Bear Press in 2011 and is currently
an Online Content Editor at LEAD Magazine on Michigan’s campus. You may read
her entire article here.

◙ That’s all for this
Monday. In the meantime, enjoy the
intervening posts from mis compadres y comadres here on La Bloga. And remember: ¡Lea un libro!